Posted
by
ScuttleMonkeyon Monday August 11, 2008 @07:37PM
from the no-lightswitch-raves dept.

Nintendo has added a new title to their WiiWare shop, Strong Bad Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner from developer Telltale Games. The new title features the infamous boxing-glove-adorned character in the first of five installments of Telltale's "Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People." "The point-and-click adventure game stars Strong Bad, the lucha libre mask-wearing character from web cartoon series Homestar Runner. Players can create 'Teen Girl Squad' comics, play a retro-styled minigame titled Snake Boxer 5, and send pictures and messages to their friends through the Wii's message board system." In addition to the new title, two classic titles have also been added for virtual console, Break In, and Star Parodier.

You know, for all the years of their unique brand of humor, WITHOUT ads, without a subscription, and without resorting to having strongbad basically beg you to buy his merchandise, think of it as a $10 donation to the chaps bros.

Seriously, all that animation must take an assload of work, it's always the same quality, there are only occasional long lapses in updates. Pay the $10 or at least nominate them for internet sainthood.

You know, for all the years of their unique brand of humor, WITHOUT ads, without a subscription, and without resorting to having strongbad basically beg you to buy his merchandise, think of it as a $10 donation to the chaps bros.
Seriously, all that animation must take an assload of work

Oh come on. The games they have on the site look like something that you would have played on a Commodore 64 or an Atari.

Right, but I wouldn't consider "commodore 64" graphics an "assload of work." They have flash templates set up for everything. It's just a matter of rearranging it and spending 5 minutes writing new scripts for everything. And by scripts, I mean action scripts...because the actual dialog has to be written on the fly to be as unfunny as it is.

Ah, but remember, there's four more episodes following this one. Count on them being about $10 apiece too. (Or if they really take off, more?) And meanwhile, they're making more of a name for themselves, and possibly growing their audience. Why, from a certain view, this looks like advertising.

They should concentrate their efforts on the [hrwiki.org] other H*R game.

Though Homestar Runner RPG had the blessing of The Bros. Chaps, it was being developed by a third party, a Mr. Paul Slocum. It doesn't seem that The Bros. Chaps had the same level of involvement, if any, that they have in Strong Bad's Cool Game. . . , so go and complain to Slocum. (Though that'd be a colossal dick move on your part.)

Back in 2005, they actually did make a great flash game [homestarrunner.com] for their website called Sinkoman 20X6 [hrwiki.org]. It was a platform game that paid homage to Mega Man, and contains tons of H*R in-jokes, as usual. Unfortunately, they stopped updating right before the final level, leaving us with a 3 year old cliffhanger.

We had to abandon it, it was just too ambitious, and during the time that I was working on it my schedule was gradually getting more and more ridiculous. The display code for that RPG was pushing the Atari so hard, and so it was very delicate and became time-consuming to keep in balance. Most of the display, music, map-handling, and memory management was in place. But the battle system and overall RPG design were just getting started. I've had some people interested in the code for other 2600 RPG projects so something may still come out of it.

We still may release a H*R Atari 2600 game at some point -- we've talked about some other ideas that would be much more reasonable.

It is a bluetooth controller. People them on Windows boxes all the time. And frankly, I find selecting items on the screen rather a pain-in-the-ass with the Wiimote. For an adventure game, a mouse would likely be better.

Telltale claims that they are going to make use of the wiimote's special capabilities. Of course, every game writer claims that, but if they do, then you're wrong, and that would justify a price difference.

At first glance, I thought HSR had suffered from the ravages of time and a fickle public, but from the comments, it seems that there are some people who manged to avoid the mega-internet sensation which ripped through my town three years back.

A Strongbad point & click adventure from the Sam & Max guys?

Aside from the fact that content driven story adventures are today's Pong in the game world, it should be pretty impressive. I love their voice acting and comic timing, even if the HSR humor is cynical and mean-spirited.

I'd check it out if I didn't have to actually play it. Or own a Wii. I miss the days when I could kick back as my friends labored their way through silly games while I watched. I pretty much cannot stand the act of actually working through nearly any kind of video game myself, but for some reason, I really enjoy seeing my friends play them. --That way I don't have to muck around with annoying control pads or remember button combinations and I don't have to stress out over endless, repetitive hand-eye coordination challenges, whereas I DO get to see a story (of sorts) unfold before me and share in the camaraderie of cheering on friends as they confront challenges. It was generally far more fun than regular TV programming because I got to see people I cared about achieving their goals, (even if they were meaningless digital goals). --Then I grew up and no longer have time to blow on basement adventures and junk food.

Still, good for the Strongbad creators. They've worked long and hard and they have lots of talent. I hope this project does well for them!-FL

There's also a Trogdor arcade machine in the basement of Strongbad's house in Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive etc. etc... But I haven't been able to play it yet - the joystick's broken & we're waiting for parts that Strong Sad has ordered.

I think the other replies pretty much sum up the answer to the nerd points question, but I'll try to sum up what this is about.

Strong Bad is a fictional character created by The Brothers Chaps of Homestar Runner [homestarrunner.com], a very popular Flash cartoon series.

While the name would suggest that the toons are about Homestar, the majority of them come from a section of the site called "Strong Bad Emails", in which Strong Bad answers e-mails sent to "his" e-mail address (strongbad [at] homestarrunner [dot] com) by the readership.

TFA is about the first episode in a video game starring Strong Bad. As a side note, in case you didn't know, Telltale Games are the good folks who gave us the (modern) adventures of Sam & Max. Great stuff.